Ryan FowlerA cross-party parliamentary report has urged significant reforms to the UK’s immigration system, recommending that asylum seekers be allowed to work six months after arriving, according to The Guardian.
Authored by the all-party parliamentary groups on poverty and migration, the forthcoming report criticises current government policies as seemingly designed to drive migrants into destitution without deterring arrivals.
The investigation, drawing on 200 expert submissions, highlights the financial burden on taxpayers caused by the existing immigration and asylum frameworks. It calls for reduced immigration and nationality fees, particularly for young people aiming for settlement and British citizenship, and suggests shortening the route to permanent settlement from ten years to five.
Additionally, the report presses for enhanced access to social security and public services for migrants to prevent them from being forced into unsafe and exploitative work. It identifies long waiting periods for asylum decisions and restricted access to social security as factors contributing to migrant poverty.
Ruth Lister, a Labour peer and co-author of the report, told The Guardian, “It is hard to avoid the conclusion that policy is sometimes designed to push people into poverty in the hope that it will deter others from moving to the UK, even though there is little evidence that this would indeed be a deterrent.”
Labour MP Olivia Blake, co-chair of the migration APPG, commented on the broader implications of the flawed system: “It is widely acknowledged that the UK’s immigration system is broken, but our report shows that it appears to want to break the people within it as well.”
The report also advocates for a comprehensive refugee integration and support strategy and proposes that ministers should offer free English language lessons to all UK residents, irrespective of their immigration status.
